No NFL player should know more about crime than Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis.
Lewis, after all, was once indicted for murder and aggravated assault following the stabbing death of two men at the close of a Super Bowl XXXIV party in Atlanta on Jan. 31, 2000.
His defenders will rightly argue that the charges were later dropped in exchange for his testimony against the other two men charged in the crime, but he was fined $250,000 by the NFL for his role in the murders and later settled with the victims' families to avoid a civil suit.
He also later admitted to misleading the police on the morning following the stabbings and the white suit he was reportedly wearing on the night of the murders was never found.
So with that as a backdrop, perhaps we should pay some attention to Lewis's interview with ESPN this past weekend, the one where he tells the network's Sal Paolantonio: "Do this research if we don't have a [NFL] season - watch how much evil - which we call crime - watch how much crime picks up if you take away our game."
Asked why he thought crime would increase without NFL football, Lewis replied, "There's nothing else to do, Sal."
Scared yet, America? Doubling the door locks and ordering up extra security systems because mass riots, mayhem and all matter of other unspeakable acts - in other words, any given Sunday in the NFL - will surely break out without professional football to, um, calm the savage beast?
With this morning becoming the 69th day of the NFL lockout - the longest such work stoppage in league history - should we not begin taping public service announcements that will end as follows: "9-1-1 ... sponsored by the NFL"?
Or perhaps we should call this what it is: Baloney. Horse feathers. Rhetoric on steroids, just to bring up another NFL sore subject.
First of all, there's no way either the owners or players should allow a strike to shorten the 2011 regular season, especially with the New York Giants scheduled to meet the Washington Redskins on the 10th anniversary of the World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings.
Not that it couldn't be argued that 9/11/11 should be reserved for something more spiritual and pastoral than the legalized violence that is NFL football. But it could also just as passionately be argued that opening the NFL regular-season on that Sunday is the ultimate tribute to the fearless way we've pretty much lived our lives the past 10 years.
We play NFL football on autumn Sundays in this best nation on earth, by golly. That's what we did before 9/11. That's what we've done every autumn since, terrorism be darned.
But that's basically where my desire to see this strike settled comes to a close. Well, that and my concern for all the food vendors, parking attendants, souvenir hawkers and everyone else on the NFL's periphery who'll suffer great financial hardship if there's no season. But those folks should also be able to win a lawsuit against both the obstinate owners and greedy players.
As for the certain lost revenues of Las Vegas and bookmakers everywhere for whom every NFL Sunday is Christmas, your temporary setbacks will be a lot of gamblers' gains. At least momentarily.
But when it comes to Lewis's assertion that there's nothing else to do, I submit that there's plenty for this country to do. Like finding a new way every day to help the flood victims along the Mississippi River, the tornado victims throughout the Midwest and South - and please add Joplin, Mo., to your overstuffed prayer list today - the fire victims in Texas and the economic victims of a three-year long economic recession.
We might even reconnect with our own family members we've ignored for at least three hours every Sunday afternoon for the past six decades or so.
Moreover, both the NBA - whose potential strike seems far more likely - and NFL might want to consider what happened to Major League Baseball after its 1994 strike wiped out the final six weeks of the regular season and the entire postseason.
It took a steroid-infused home run derby between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa some four summers later to bring baseball back. Not that the NFL would ever stoop to steroids to enhance it's game. Would it?
And given all that, the greatest crime of all wouldn't be an autumn without the NFL, but rather any NFL labor discussion that takes Lewis's lunacy seriously.